A wonderful set of essays on
music composition in America in the 20th century.

The Third Ear,
Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Henry Holt

This book is a must-read for
those composers whove experienced the tyranny and
triviality of academia, and
who yearn to write a kind of music
which restores vitality, energy and an understanding of overtones
to their musical thought.

This is a truly unique little book. It
deals with the many social, psychological and artistic issues that are faced by artists of
all mediums who work alone and put so much of
their energies and attention into their work.

A wonderfully inspiring book
that can be enjoyed by both the professional musician and the
layman. It investigates music
and sound from many points of view
including the brains response to sound and the bodys
capacity to perform music.
If there is one book on the philosophy
of music that you read this year, this is the one.

Poetics of Music,
Igor
Stravinsky, Harvard

Ideas and reflections about
music by a masterful and original composer.

Rhythmic
Training,
Robert
Starer, MCA Music

Exercise book for reading and
comprehending rhythmic patterns, meter and accents.

On The Track,
Karlin/Wright, Schirmer Books

Fine book on the craft of
composing music for film. Covers many technical and business
issues and contains
interviews of those composers highly
experienced in the craft of scoring music to film.

Composers on
Music, Sam Morgenstern, Pantheon

A collection of short essays
and letters by composers about music. Offers insights into the
thinking of Mahler, Bach,
Mozart, Byrd, and many other composers
who devoted their lives to music composition.

A social analysis of the effect of technology on music and musicians.
Excellent reading although I wish the author had
dedicated as much of his
comprehensive research on art music as he did on pop music.

A collection of articles and
essays from Computer Music Journal. Some are highly technical and
require an understanding
of the mathematics of filtering and
signal processing, others are less technical and of use to the
musician.

The Computer
Music Tutorial,Curtis Roads,
The MIT Press

The classic textbook on
electronic music and related disciplines. Very technical, some
chapters cannot be fully comprehended
without knowledge of
mathematics and the equations of signal processing. Other
chapters are much more readable to the
trained musician. An
excellent reference book for the electronic music studio.

New Harvard
Dictionary of Music, Randel Belknap,
Harvard

A well-known and well-used
music dictionary, in short and long versions.